Generally, how do the audiences expect a ’90s love story to end? Possibly, most will predict an ending with the ‘thus they lived happily ever after’ note. And this is where the craftsmanship of Jahid Preetom lies.
In wrapping a typical love story, he inserted twists and turns that will surely go beyond the audiences’ expectations.
Neel Oporajita, the love story of Neel and Oporajita, Siraj, AKA Meghdoot and Shila, is just another traditional suburban love story. Shila, a teenager about to complete her HSC examination, gets in touch with a book called ‘Neel Oporajita’, written by some Meghdoot. The book impresses her so much that she, in her mind, falls in love with the author, writes a letter to him immediately, and after exchanging a significant number of letters, she fixes a meeting with this Meghdoot.
Siraj is a small suburban physiotherapist on the other side of the story. Besides this, he is also a writer, having a pen name, Meghdoot.
Though the daughter of one of his patients, Labanya, is secretly in love with Siraj, the day Siraj receives Shila’s letter, he also falls in love with Shila in his mind.
So, one day, Shila finally comes to meet her Meghdoot. Though she doesn’t find this therapist, a suburban, ordinary boy, to be that much charming, her luck makes her spend the whole day with Meghdoot, and guess what? Siraj is now in more love with Shila, so much that it becomes so hard for him to bid farewell to her.
However, Shila leaves, ending the ‘old bottle’ part of the story, and here starts the ‘new wine’ part, which will surely blow the viewers’ minds.
For the kind information of the viewers, with a spoiler alert, Neel Oporajita is not a typical love story; rather, it tells the tale of revenge, revenge against the most hateful crime of humankind, rape.
More than a thousand women in Bangladesh face rape every year, and this is only the official part of the statistics. And such news is pretty common nowadays that female students, or ladies from different professions, are raped while returning home by bus. Most importantly, these rapes have frequently been done by the bus drivers and their helpers.
Jahid Preetom has captured this very fact in his frames. Both the girls from Siraj’s life, Shila and Labanya, become victims of this horrible crime, and the rest of the story is necessarily Siraj’s revenge against the rapists. It gives the rise of a vigilante in town, the self-claimed judge of the rapists, Meghdoot!
To talk about the acting, with his deep voice, matching expressions and personality, Musfiq R Farhan was enormous in the character of Siraj, or Meghdoot.
Sarah Alam, as Labanya, perfectly handled her job. Tanjin Tisha, in the character of Shila, tried her best to get into the character of a spontaneous college girl, her acting was pretty good, too, but in some scenes, she seemed to be a bit older than this character demanded to be. Monira Mithu, Shila’s mother, was top-notch.
But, the two who should be specially mentioned are Iqbal Hossain, the bus driver, and Tauhidul Tamil, the helper. Both of them were scary and weird enough, particularly the way Tauhidul took his character through the transition from being a light-hearted, friendly bus conductor to a dark-hearted rapist, which was worth appreciation.
The success of the director, Jahid Preetom, lies in the fact that he perfectly filled the old bottle of typical romantic drama with a new wine made of revenge, thriller and social problems. The cinematography was quite good, editing and colour grading were also on point.
The short film can be watched on youtube.
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